Friday, February 24, 2006

Lawyers, Guns, Money and Drugs

For days and nights they battled the Bantu to their kneesThey killed to earn their living and to help out the Congolese - Warren Zevon

I'll be returning to the "Grave Mysteries" discussion as soon as I can, but I don't have time tonight to do much more than point you toward this article in Wednesday's Village Voice (with thanks to Paul Thompson for the head's up), that makes sound parapolitical sense of the UAE port deal vetted by the office of John Negroponte.

Regarding the cuts to operational capacity of the Coast Guard and the inadequacy of Customs, James Ridgeway writes:

This is a dream setup for any arms or dope dealer, and that's exactly what the United Arab Emirates is all about.The ties between its top officials and royal family with the Taliban and Al Qaeda go back at least a decade.

The UAE is not only the center of financial dealings in the Persian Gulf, it is switching central for dope and arms dealing. The dope comes out of Afghanistan into the UAE where tax monies are collected and used to buy arms, which were sent back in for the Taliban. Some of this money is thought to have helped finance the 9-11 attacks. A money trail is set forth in the government's filings in the Moussaoui case.

Long at the center of this operation is the mysterious Russian arms dealer, Victor Bout.... His planes are registered to various companies all operating out of the United Arab Emirates.

In fact, the United Arab Emirates have been viewed as hub for trade going and coming to Afghanistan, with drugs coming from Afghanistan on their way to the West, and weapons from Bout, going back. While transportation was via Bout's different air cargo interests, it also involved the Afghan state airlines, called Ariana Airlines. The airline was controlled by Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda agents masquerading as Ariana employees flew out of Afghanistan, through Sharjah, one of the emirates, and on to points west.

Bout, naturally enough for someone beyond the reach of any arm of justice, has been a wildly successful contractor to United States forces in Iraq. Last month, Douglas Farah wrote of Bout's Pentagon connections:

Wisconsin Democratic Senator Russell Feingold first raised the issue of Bout's coalition military contracts on May 18, 2004, in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. Feingold asked then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage about reports of U.S. military links to Bout's companies. It took Wolfowitz eight months to respond.

In a January 31, 2005, letter to Feingold, Wolfowitz acknowledged that "both the U.S. Army and the Coalition Provisional Authority (in Iraq) did conduct business with companies that, in turn, subcontracted work to second tier suppliers who leased aircraft owned by companies associated with Mr. Bout.... Although we are aware of a few companies that are connected to Mr. Bout, most notably Air Bas and Jetline, we suspect Mr. Bout has other companies or enterprises unknown to the Government."

In fact, as the Los Angeles Times first reported in 2004, Bout aircraft were in constant motion into Iraq after the invasion. A single Bout company, Irbis, flew more than 140 flights into Iraq for the U.S. military and its contractors by the end of 2004.

Over a period of eight years, the United States government has repeatedly asked the UAE to shut down Bout's businesse "as required by UN charter," but Dubai only ventures that it will "study" the issue. Of course: not only are the UAE's rulers Bout's business partners, but they can see the US winking at them even as it makes the "demand."

So there we have it, and a familiar narrative it is, too. Many observers have already concluded that the UAE deal wasn't about security - after all, the enemy is already within - but about money. It should be clear now what kind of money (the kind that's unaccounted for - the best kind), and why Bush made this, of all causes, the first for which he vowed to use a veto in its defense.

This seems a through the looking glass moment for many who stuck by the rhetoric of the administration until now. If this were a legitimate government and these were normal times, its officials would be back on their heels if they were still on their feet. But instead, they're even emboldened to piss away their base with a move that makes no political sense. But then, we're way past politics here.

Stand fast for the deluge of Heroin part II. The official "my life sucks and I'm terrified to change it" drug of choice. It keeps attritional genocide, covert intelligence budgets and prisoner rates up, and keeps the masses distracted and generally unable to facilitate the organization necessary to rectify their corrupt environments.

Worked like a charm to take down the empowerment and anti-war groundswells of the late 60's through the 70's. Got a viable, coordinated mass movement? Nothing puts it down faster than government cultivated and distributed products (Coke, Heroin, Meth, LSD, etc.). Also makes fascism go down smooth with no bitter aftertaste.

Plus it's the Bush heritage! Poppy Bush (no pun intended) was a Coke slinging top dope mover. His father Prescott was the Superfly of the Russell Trust, pushing Opium cultivated in India on China (gotta put down those Chinese Boxer insurgents you know).

Then they can also tweak and punch up it's potency in the labs to make the monkey that goes on your back, just a little heavier and a bit more intractable.

Then you can do like Nixon when he used his Bureau of Narcotics to dry up the U.S. marijuana supply and drive up it's price, so that Heroin became a more economically viable option.

British forces will not even directly stop vehicles suspected of smuggling the drug. The main role of the British forces will be to enable the Afghan police and army to establish control over areas which have remained outside their reach and allowed a resurgent Taliban and drug lords to gain ascendancy, said Col Messenger.

Even if the policy were changed to allow British involvement in poppy eradication, the troops would not be in a position to take part in such programmes, said Col Messenger, who won a DSO in the 1990-91 Iraq war.

Helmand, the biggest and the most lawless province in Afghanistan, accounts for 25 per cent of the opium produced nationally. It is the most important conduit for trafficking the drug to the West through Iran and to the rest of Asia through Pakistan.

According to British and Iraqi officials, the size of the crop is due to double next year, negating any gain made elsewhere in Afghanistan.

However, the yield from heroin has risen almost 1,000 per cent from seven Afghanis (around 8p) a kilo to 300 Afghanis (£3.44) in just two years.

2) Viktor Bout is one of those shadowy figures who briefly flicker into view, only to drop off the radar again. It's interesting -- and more than a bit dismaying -- that he's back in the news. For those who might be interested, the Yorkshire Ranter has an informative archive of posts from 2004 tracking his operations at that time.

Correction -- on double-checking, I find that the Yorkshire Ranter's archive does not end in 2004 but continues through last September. With Bout back in the news, hopefully the Ranter will take it up again.

I know I'm not the only one here with an interest in Bout -- I saw Robert Reed metnion him at one point -- but I'd really like to raise the awareness level. What Bout is doing ultimately traces back to the CIA's Air America -- first privatized in the 80's and now completely outsourced and deeply criminalized.

IMMMMMMMM-PEACHABLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!say it with me, now.IMMMMMMMM-PEACHABLE!!!!!!!!!!!!Like a mantra, say this all day, out loud, to everyone you meet, until we're all saying it; over and over and overIMMMMMMMM-PEACHABLE!!!!!!!

GEORGE BUSH WAS APPOINTED BY PRESIDENT NIXON to the White House Cabinet Committee on International Control in 1971. As vice president, he was the highest US official involved in the War on Drugs, as chairman of President Reagan’s cabinet-level working group and as director of the National Narcotics Interdiction System.

Frances Mullen, Jr., former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, called Bush’s efforts “an intellectual fraud” and “a liability rather than an asset.” Soon after these statements, Mullen resigned, and the resultant General Accounting Office report was buried.

In July 1985, the suppressed GAO paper reported that there were “no benefits from the National Narcotics Border Interdiction System, directed by George Bush. In fact, the overall effect was to encourage supply.”

Bonesmen have helped create a prohibition where plants and their by-products are sold on the black market for precious-metal prices, using a corrupted “secret govern-ment” for trafficking and propaganda. A cabal that uses an unconstitutional Drug War for political, economic and social control.

esoteric source, but interesting comment on the port deal nonetheless:http://zetatalk.com/index/zeta263.htm

begins with:"...examine the buyout, which did not go to the highest bidder. Why would the stockholders approve of a deal giving them substantially less money, to sell to the UAE, than selling to Singapore would have provided? Indonesia is not only a staunch ally of the US and Britain, but also had no links to terrorism or support of 911 and Bin Laden. The stockholders of the private British company up for sale, of course, were not presented with an option, nor are private companies that well regulated so few recourses were available to the stockholders, so they took the option they were given. Grab the money and run. The known links to terrorism the UAE presented included hosting Bin Laden for hospital care in the months leading into 911, visiting him in Pakistan, being the home country for a number of the 911 terrorists, and laundering money for the 911 crowd. With this rap sheet, why would the British and the US want to encourage their control of key ports in the US..."

Check out waynemadsenreport.com to learn all about Bout's ties to the Russian Ukrainian Israeli Mafia, including a big investor in Neil Bush's 'Ignite,' Russian oligarch Boris Berezofsky. They're not unfamiliar with Sun Cruz and Casino Jack Abramoff, surprise surprise. They're all up to their bad old ways, using the Rendition flights for cover, no doubt using the same program to disappear inconvenient witnesses. Boris and Neil are also on familiar terms with Sun Myung Moon, who's probably getting some use out of our new airbase in Paraguay, making plans with Bolivia's reactionaries.

On a side note, Strobe Talbot and Maurice Strong show up in Robert Dreyfuss' ivaluable expose, "Devil's Game." if you thought that MI-6 first cozied up to the Muslim Brotherhood during the anti-Soviet campaign in Afghanistan, this book has a lot to teach you. Similarly, Bernard Lewis and Zbigniew Brezinsky have been advocating for the arming of Central Asia's Muslims ever since the '50s, around the same time Kissinger wrote his book advocating a limited nuclear exchange with the USSR!!!!!

The Anunnaki, the Vampire and the Structure of Dissent By Marcus LiBrizzi

The vampire, an archetypal figure who pops up in many myths from around the world, is most familiar to Western audiences in the form of Bram Stoker's Dracula and Anne Rice's Lestat — aristocratic bloodsucking immortals of unholy origin. In more paranoid circles, vampires have been re-imagined as a race of alien beings called the Anunnaki, who have traveled from beyond to control and colonize the planet Earth (in fact, they've been in control for quite a while now). Looking at the conspiracy theories of underground celebrity David Icke, Marcus LiBrizzi offers his own theory about the meaning of these horrific beings for a world caught in the grip of a grand economic reorganization. Linking these myths to the realities of transnational capital and the Network Society, LiBrizzi is able to craft his own compelling narrative about the horrors of the New World Order. [Editor's introduction to the previous publication.]

<1> The latest incarnation of the vampire — in the conspiracy theories of David Icke — reveals the critical, revolutionary heart of the vampire legend. Discourse on the vampire appears above all to provide a structure of dissent, a metaphorical means of representing and soliciting critiques of the social order. The Anunnaki form of the vampire — in its immersion in the constellation of contemporary conspiracy theories, in its reflection on global capitalism, and in its blurring of historical and fictional narratives — has moved this structure of dissent from the cloak of darkness to the light of day.

<2> Considered by some to be the reigning conspiracy theorist in the US, David Icke (who is British) formulates his theories of a worldwide, age-old conspiracy around an extraterrestrial race of beings called the Anunnaki. Self-styled the "most controversial author and speaker in the world," David Icke has been subject to much ridicule but has nonetheless become an industry, publishing eleven books, producing video and audiotapes, embarking on a worldwide lecture circuit, and creating a website that allegedly attracts 10,000 visitors a day (Canadian, Par. 13). A former soccer player from a working-class family, Icke became a household name in the UK as a national sports and news reporter for the BBC and as the spokesperson for the Green Party ("About", Par. 7-. Starting a full-time writing career in the early 1990s, Icke began with New Age inspired works like Truth Vibrations (1991), which combines accounts of his self transformation with psychically-imparted warnings on the imminent destruction of the earth, from there moving towards conventional conspiracy theories, and finally, beginning with his 1999 book The Biggest Secret, focusing his conspiracy theories around the Anunnaki and their nefarious involvement in human history.

<3> The Anunnaki, whose name is Sumerian, meaning "Those who from Heaven to Earth Came" (Icke, p.5), are a reptilian race that originated from the legendary planet known as Nibiru (Planet X), or the place of the crossing, which has a 3,600 year elliptical orbit that takes it between Jupiter and Mars and then out into space (p.5). For the past 450,000 years, according to Icke, the Anunnaki have been ruling earth in different guises and from different dimensions. Through genetic engineering, the Anunnaki have manipulated the evolution of humans as a slave race. "[T]he Anunnaki created bloodlines to rule humanity on their behalf," he writes, "and these [...] are the families still in control of the world to this day" (p.9). The interbreeding of the rich and powerful (primarily, for Icke, the European aristocracy and the Eastern Establishment of the US) is not done for reasons of snobbery but rather "to hold a genetic structure that gives them certain abilities, especially the ability to 'shape-shift' and manifest in other forms" (p.9). Working with these crossbreeds are full-blooded Anunnaki, some physically present on earth, others influencing individuals and events psychically from what Icke calls "the lower fourth dimension" (p.25). Forming a "Brotherhood" or secret society network, the Anunnaki have effectively "hijack[ed] the planet" (p.46).

<4> The recurring motif in the discourse on the Anunnaki is vampirism. In fact, so strong is this component in their depiction that it's safe to say that Icke's work represents one of the most recent developments in the discourse of the vampire. "While vampire beliefs are varied," writes James Craig Holte, "certain elements of the vampire myth are consistent. The most important are the inability to experience death, the importance of blood, and the sexual connection between vampire and victim" (Holte, p.246). Other structural similarities between the traditional vampire and the Anunnaki include shape-shifting, hypnotism, and links to secret societies. After establishing the Anunnaki as a manifestation of the vampire, we'll unpack the implications of this figure, using the tools of a Marxist critical practice.

<5> The Anunnaki, like traditional vampires, enjoy eternal or extended life spans. Icke claims that "[t]he fourth dimensional reptilians wear their human bodies like a genetic overcoat and when one body dies the same reptilian 'moves house' to another body and continues the Agenda into another generation" (p.46). One type of creature Icke describes is a reptilian "inside" a human physical body; "[i]t seems that [...] [the Anunnaki] need to occupy a very reptilian dominated genetic stream to do this, hence certain bloodlines always end up in the positions of power. Other less pure crossbreed human-reptilians are those bodies which are possessed by a reptilian consciousness from the fourth dimension and these are people whom psychics see as essentially human, but 'overshadowed' by a reptilian" (p.46). Crossbreeding to infuse reptilian genetics into human bloodlines, the Anunnaki gain the means to defy death, as we conceive it.

<6> In respect to blood drinking, Icke is very clear: The Anunnaki drink blood, which they need in order to exist in this dimension and hold a human form (p.288). Embedded in this need lies another parallel between the Anunnaki and the figure of the vampire — the power to shape-shift (from reptilian to human form for the Anunnaki, and usually from vampire form to that of bat or even mist for the traditional vampire). But the Anunnaki also feed off fear, aggression and other negative emotions. Thus, while blood is needed as a vital life force, the Anunnaki are also addicted to "adrenalchrome," a hormone released in the human body during periods of extreme terror (pp.290,331). Rather than sucking the blood directly from the necks of their victims, the Anunnaki apparently slash the throats of their victims from left to right and consume the blood out of goblets (p.303). Icke claims that the origin of the vampire stories are the blood drinking and "energy sucking" rituals of the Anunnaki (p.26). "In India," he writes, "it was called soma and in Greece it was ambrosia, some researchers suggest. This was said to be the nectar of the gods and it was — the reptilian gods who are genetic blood drinkers" (p.288).

<7> In the sexual connection between slayer and victim, the Anunnaki also share another similarity with the traditional vampire. However, depictions of the Anunnaki by Icke contain none of the erotic allure and seductiveness that distinguish many vampire texts. Instead, the sexual bond between the Anunnaki and their victims is characterized by violence — rape, murder, and Satanic ritual. "Satanism at its core is about the manipulation and theft of another person's energy and consciousness," writes Icke, who states that "Sex is so common in Satanic ritual because at the moment of orgasm, the body explodes with energy which the Satanists and the reptiles can capture and absorb" (p.295). For Icke, of course, the demons honored or appeased by satanic sex rituals are none other than the reptilian Anunnaki (p.34). Sex is also a fundamental tool of the Anunnaki mind control program and, more prosaically, it figures prominently as a means of blackmail. The picture that emerges is one involving vast networks of sexual abuse and ritual murder — graphic accounts of satanic practices at the playgrounds for world leaders, such as the Bohemian Grove, a 2,700 acre compound north of San Francisco — mass graves for victims drained of their blood and libidinal energies — and the cultivation of sexual crimes to create an energy field that nourishes these rapacious ETs.

<8> There are other shared traits between the traditional vampire and the Anunnaki, for example, the role of secret societies. One of Icke's chief contributions to the discourse on the vampire lies in his immersion of this figure into a vast web of clandestine organizations, from ancient mystery schools and cults like the Brotherhood of the Snake to the Knights Templar and the Masonic Order, from global entities like the UN, the Trilateral Commission, and the Council on Foreign Relations to drug cartels, satanic churches, and the Black Nobility. A keystone in this architecture of conspiracy is the Order of Draco, which conjures up the most famous of all vampires — Count Dracula — and underscores his demonic, draconian, and reptilian associations. "According to [Laurence] Gardner, the name Dracula means 'Son of Dracul' and was inspired by Prince Vlad III of Transylvania-Wallachia, a chancellor of the Court of the Dragon in the 15th century. This prince's father was called Dracul within the Court" (p.56). In their network of secret societies, of which the Order of Draco is but a single manifestation, the Anunnaki highlight the conspiratorial dimension of all vampires. Finally, the Anunnaki share with the traditional vampire the capacity to hypnotize: Icke writes that reptilian bloodlines "have the ability to produce an extremely powerful hypnotic stare, just like a snake hypnotizing its prey and this is the origin of giving someone the 'evil eye'" (p.42).

<9> Icke's paradigm displays more than the vitality, persistence, and adaptive qualities of the vampire legend. His theories reveal the dissident energies contained already in the vampire legacy.

<10> To begin with, Icke's work represents a major fusion of the vampire cult and the field of conspiracy theories. Richard Hofstadter, in his famous essay "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" (1963) claims that the "distinguishing thing about the paranoid style is not that its exponents see conspiracies or plots here and there in history, but that they regard a 'vast' [...] conspiracy as the motive force in historical events. History is a conspiracy" (p.29). Conspiracies, even when they're not construed as vast, over-arching plots, however, have an internal, integrative logic. In other words, there is a momentum in conspiracy theories to pull in all other theories, and finally to arrive at a state in which everything is connected. Part of Icke's popularity lies in his ability to integrate most contemporary American conspiracy theories into one over-arching framework. Situated squarely in the center of this design is the ancient figure of the vampire. Thus, the vampire (or, more specifically, the Anunnaki Vampire) has colonized the field of conspiracy theories — government-sponsored alien cover-ups, the New World Order, suspicious deaths, the secret government, suppressed research, the intrigues of the CIA, and the list goes on indefinitely.

<11> From a Marxist perspective, of course, this development is more than just a formal or aesthetic innovation, for many of the conspiracy theories now circulating in the cultural medium of the US contain, at their core, critical, dissenting, and rebellious points of view (encompassing both extreme right and left) that are articulated in opposition to the social, political, and cultural status quo. While Hofstadter claims that the US has no monopoly on conspiracism, other scholars like Peter Knight hold that conspiracy theories hold an indispensable place in American ideology formation, and that current "conspiracy theories can be read in part as panicked responses to the increasing multiculturalism and globalization of the present" (Knight, p.5). Revolutionary or reactionary, however, these theories are inimical to the governing elite and represent a tradition of oppositional practice. As Knight puts it, "conspiracy theory has become the lingua franca of a countercultural opposition that encompasses a vast spectrum of political thinking from the committed to the casual" (pp.6-7).

<12> An initial difficulty in seeing the vampire as a symbol of the ruling class — capitalist or otherwise — lies in the diverse variations taken on by vampires in different places and times. As Brian Frost puts it, "the vampire is a polymorphic phenomenon with a host of disparate guises to its credit" (Frost, p.1). Among the various legendary "guises" of the vampire inventoried by Frost are spirit vampires, astral vampires, psychic vampires, animal vampires, and real-life vampires who are "sadistic criminals [...] urged on by a physical craving for blood" (p.15). Complicating the picture is the fact that Bram Stoker's character of Count Dracula, who for many encapsulates the aristocratic ethos of the vampire, "lacks precisely what makes a man 'noble': servants. Dracula stoops to driving the carriage, cooking the meals, making the beds, cleaning the castle" (Moretti, p.90). Furthermore, in some of the earliest European vampire legends, the undead feed off the living members of their own families (Murgoci, p.1, which at first glance mitigates the social-class dynamic often conjured up in the image of aristocratic vampires draining the lifeblood of their locals.

<13> There is, nevertheless, a critical and even radical dimension to the figure of the vampire, who, as a parasite, circulates as a political metaphor. The word vampire has from the start been used in oppositional literature as a symbol of an exploiting class, government, industry, or institution. A decade "after the introduction of the word 'vampire' in an English publication in 1732, (an account of the investigation of Arnold Paul in Serbia) [...] [a] serious utilization of the vampire as a political metaphor occurred in Observations on the Revolution of 1688 ([...] published in 1741)" which identified foreign investors as "'Vampires of the Publick'" (Melton, p.538). Only "[a] few years later, in 1764, Voltaire, in his Philosophical Dictionary," refers to "vampires" as "'stock-jobbers, brokers, and men of business who sucked the blood of the people in broad daylight'" (p.538).

<14> But it was Marx who first suggested that the vampire can be interpreted as a metaphor of capitalism and who also implied a method for this interpretation. In volume one of Capital (1867), he writes that "Capital is dead labour, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks" (p.342). Extrapolating on this analogy, Franco Moretti provides a reading of Bram Stoker's Dracula, writing, "If the vampire is a metaphor for capital, then Stoker's vampire, who is of 1897, must be the capital of 1897" (Moretti, p.92). Accordingly, Moretti sees Count Dracula as the expression or figure of monopoly capitalism, which, to the 19th century bourgeoisie, could not be recognized as an emerging force but only as a relic of the past displaced into the present (p.93). Whether or not one agrees with Moretti's reading of the Count, it is his method that's of most value. As Rob Latham pus it, "Moretti stresses that, while the vampire is a perfect general image for the basic mechanism of capitalist development, individual vampire texts illuminate specifically the historical phases of capitalism in which they are produced" (Latham, p.129).

<15> Applying Moretti's method, we can perceive the Anunnaki as metaphorical of the unique forms capitalism has taken by the 21st Century. Certainly, Anunnaki vampires embody the market for genetic engineering as well as space exploration. These dimensions, in fact, are projected back into the origins of Anunnaki control over earth and its resources: travel from another planet, interdimensional traffic, and a crossbreeding agenda coterminous with the evolution of the human race. Anunnaki vampires also control finance, which was undergoing a tremendous transformation and development during the time when Icke was writing that, of all the spheres of Anunnaki domination, "The most important [...] in terms of control, is banking" (p.207). Electronic banking, credit, and the demediation of stock exchange through on-line trading are some of the key elements in the recent development of the finance industry (Castells, pp. 152-153). But we can go deeper than this kind of analysis, and discover in the discourse on the Anunnaki examples of remarkable changes, not in select markets, but rather in the very structure of the economy.

<16> In this, more significant, sense the Anunnaki are linked to present-day capitalism through their association with global control. Icke consistently depicts these alien bloodsuckers as monopolizing world leadership positions in government, finance, religion and the media. In this sense, Anunnaki vampires represent a demonized expression of the unique form capitalism has taken during the very period in which Icke's theories were formulated, published and popularized. The late 1990s issued in — for the first time in history — a global economy, defined by Manuel Castells as "an economy whose core components have the institutional, organizational, and technological capacity to work as a unit in real time, or in chosen time, on a planetary scale" (p.102). Thus, "this is a new brand of capitalism, technologically, organizationally, and institutionally distinct" (pp.160-161).

<17> The forces spearheading this change derive in part from key industries, notably information technology — centering on the Internet — finance and biotechnology (Castells, p.161). Other contributing factors in the formation of the global economy are government policies that restructured capitalism through laws deregulating and liberalizing economic activity (p.148). The global economy has, of course, catapulted the scale of capitalism; "for the first time in history the whole planet is capitalist or dependent on its connection to global capitalist networks" (pp.160-161). However, as Castells points out, the global economy "is not a planetary economy [...] [because] it does not embrace all economic processes in the planet, it does not include all territories, and it does not include all people in its workings, although it does affect directly or indirectly the livelihood of all humankind" (p.132). Thus the global economy is significant, not only for it inclusivity, but also for its significant and shifting exclusions, marginalizations and hidden bypasses fraught through its great grid or network of power relations.

<18> Anunnaki vampires are perfectly suited to, and a perfect representation of, a global economy in the scope of their engagement and their profile in emergent industries, but there are other ways as well. This is because their secret agenda has always already been the creation of a one-world government — a New World Order — bypassing nations and creating a system or web from which there is no escape. The New World Order figures prominently in conspiracy theories and in literature such as Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). But during the millennium and start of the 21st Century, demonstrations against globalism have been on the rise, responding to rapid developments in transnationalism. Another aspect of the Anunnaki relevant here is their multicultural image. The Anunnaki have been written retroactively into all mythological systems, making them true transnationals. For example, they people the pages of the Indian Vedas, Babylonian myths, as well as the books of the Bible, and they are at the heart of ancient snake-worshipping cults worldwide. Moreover, they are literally seeded into the human genome through the Anunnaki engineering of the race, interbreeding alien genetics into all peoples, symbolized, for example in Genesis, as the saliva Jehovah mixes with clay to form the first man.

<19> Not surprisingly, Anunnaki narratives have a lot to say in terms of the location, construction, and commodification of the self. Unlike traditional vampires who feed solely off a victim's blood or soul, the Anunnaki thrive on negative energies such as fear and aggression. These ETs drain individuals of their sense of wellbeing through the manipulation and absorption of libidinal energies and — ultimately — the theft of consciousness and agency. On the one hand, the location of the self that the Anunnaki attack seems closely linked to consumerist notions. For example, New Age self-actualization products as well as the market for energy drinks — even caffeine-enhanced water — not to mention designer drugs — are only a few of the new industries catering profitably to the very malady Icke derives from Anunnaki domination. And, of course, Icke's works themselves represent a (profitable) venture in a multi-million dollar market for conspiracy theories in American popular culture. On the other hand, discourse on the Anunnaki is not necessarily complicit with the capitalist system that produces such effects. A current line of cultural theory "has alleged that the modalities of consumer culture — and the forms of subjectivity they enable — do not necessarily integrate seamlessly into the capitalist society which has mobilized them but may instead be potentially subversive of its purposes" (Latham, p.132). The consumption of Icke's works — in fact, the growing market for conspiracism in the US — would seem to be a case in point here, disseminating and perpetuating an oppositional worldview, a "hermeneutics of suspicion," while contributing to the accumulation of capital.

<20> Another revealing dimension of Anunnaki vampires lies in their collective depiction; unlike many accounts of the vampire, Icke's theories do not revolve around distinct Anunnaki individuals but rather focuses on them as a class or group; in this sense the Anunnaki do not convey the same individualistic focus so often encountered in vampire narratives. Even Anunnaki forms of consciousness are best described as a "groupthink" mentality. On this, Icke writes that "The reptilians seek [...] to influence everyone by stimulating the behavioral patterns of the reptile region of the brain — hierarchical thinking, aggression, conflict, division, lack of compassion and a need for ritual" (p.46). Symbolic of contemporary capitalism, this collective depiction of the Anunnaki reflects the rise of networks, and their decentering development, which have instrumentally caused — and are themselves produced by — the new global economy. The network supersedes the individual as the subject of the vampire narrative. Here Castells, speaking on the network society of global economics, is instructive: "For the first time in history, the basic unit of economic organization is not a subject, be it individual (such as the entrepreneur [...]) or collective (such as the capitalist class, the corporation, the state) [...] [Instead] the unit is the network, made up of a variety of subjects and organizations, relentlessly modified as networks adapt" (Castells, p.214).

<21> In their networked, post-subjective form of the vampire, the Anunnaki are metaphorical of the precise trajectory assumed by contemporary capitalism. Network is the same term Icke uses to describe the reptilian base of operations today, writing "After thousands of years of evolution, the reptilian network is now a vast and often unfathomable web of interconnecting secret societies, banks, businesses, political parties, security agencies, media owners, and so on" (Icke, p.259). Discourse on the Anunnaki vampire is in step with broader trends in American conspiracy theories, themselves responses to ideological crises associated with post-modernism and the growth of a network society. Writing on conspiracy theories in the postwar US, Timothy Melley points out that "the term 'conspiracy' rarely signifies a small, secret plot any more. Instead, it frequently refers to the workings of a large organization, technology, or system, a powerful and obscure entity so dispersed that it is the very antithesis of the traditional conspiracy" (Melley, p.59). Melley argues that conspiracy theories in the US have historically been an ideological means of validating individualism. And this new, impersonal breed of conspiracism reflects anxiety over the loss of individuality and agency and stands as both "an acknowledgment, and rejection, of postmodern subjectivity" (p.65).

<22> Perhaps most revealing of all is the dissolution of the boundary between fantasy and reality — the presentation of the vampire as an historical agent rather than a fictional character. Deeply ironic and radical, this slippage of fact and fantasy drives the vampire legacy much closer to its critical core. If the traditional vampire articulates dissent, it also distorts the representation of real relations, which are displaced into the realm of the imaginary. In the form of the Anunnaki, however, vampires have infiltrated the field of conspiracy theories, spilling from the page onto the pavement, as it were. Moving from metaphor to a kind of mimesis of the grotesque, the vampire legacy shape-shifts — its implicit charge evolving into an explosive critique.

Works Cited

"About David Icke, the Man, His Philosophy, and His Work." N.d. Online. Internet. 3 January 2003. Available www.davidicke.com/icke/about.html

WASHINGTON, Feb. 24 (UPI) -- A United Arab Emirates government-owned company is poised to take over port terminal operations in 21 American ports, far more than the six widely reported.

The Bush administration has approved the takeover of British-owned Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co. to DP World, a deal set to go forward March 2 unless Congress intervenes.

P&O is the parent company of P&O Ports North America, which leases terminals for the import and export and loading and unloading and security of cargo in 21 ports, 11 on the East Coast, ranging from Portland, Maine to Miami, Florida, and 10 on the Gulf Coast, from Gulfport, Miss., to Corpus Christi, Texas, according to the company's Web site.

President George W. Bush on Tuesday threatened to veto any legislation designed to stall the handover.

this is definately a major project for the transition of america from '1st world' to '3rd world'.flood the country with heroin from afghanistan thru a 3rd party (the UAE government) operating all our major ports. this also has effects on human smuggling and its end results. just imagine. i don't know much about the arms dealing stuff.

i agree with you jeff. i think we've finally witnessed the tipping point. a through the looking glass moment.

it definately makes no political sense for this to be the issue the president of my country is going to use his first veto on, as rediculous as that sounds 6 years into a presidency. and as someone else said, the other time he threatened it was because HE WAS DEFENDING TORTURE.

yeah, we live in a different environment entirely now.

we're beyond politics, now it's fiddling with the last few pieces before the blockbuster event.

"The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

rdr:The quote is from an article by Ron Susskind in the NYT magazine, 10/17/04.He attributes it to an unnamed "senior Baush advisor."http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html?ex=1255665600&en=890a96189e162076&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

News flash: this country's leaders, of both parties, are selling it out and have been doing so hand over fist since the 1970s. (Not to say that there was none of this before then, but that seems to me to be when it really kicked into high gear.) Politics doesn't matter. It's all about robbing the treasury, liquidating America's assets (both public and private), and ripping off the American public.

The different political factions of America do not compete in the electoral realm because they think they can run the country better... unless you add "into the ground" after "run."

Call me a cynic, but I don't think John Kerry would have been any different. He's just the same product with different packaging.

Look around the world. It happens to "lesser" countries all the time. Liquidating the wealth of nations is a hugely profitable enterprise. America is currently in the mid-to-late phases of a planned kleptocratic liquidation and deindustrialization. My guess would be that the **** is going to hit the fan around the time that the "boomers" start retiring.

"Looking glass moment"? This is extremely brazen, (and of course that is nothing new) but to override Congress with the first veto in 6 years just to be sure this take over happens... I think something about it is key. It is all-or-nothing to them now. This is much more than just a "looking glass moment". This is end-game.

"why are they emboldened to piss away their base with a move that makes no political sense?"

Because they no longer need they're base in order to accomplish their own objectives, possibly? The base was used to leverage themselves into positions to exploit and TRULY make some REAL money through deals with the Arabs.

Because they anticpiate the emmenint crash of the American dollar from reasons RI and other sites have seen coming for months/years?

Because the base fundamentals first require Armageddon before they can have their cool-aid Rapture?

Because de-industrialization of America has been a prime motivation now for several decades?

We are awaiting the next Big Wedding type of event. After that the gloves come off.

Those 600 existing detention camp sites (which contrary to some reporting are not complete but in various states of readiness) will be quickly brought into action as a result of the January Army Corps of Engineers award to Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root of a $385 million contract to construct detention centers somewhere in the United States, to deal with "an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs,"

That is why alienating their base doesn't matter. Soon they alienate all of us.

yes indeed- Bush and ports brings up CSX shipping containers and the Carlyle Group, and it's board member James Baker, who's law firm is defending a 911 "terrorist", while back at Carlyle members of the family of Osama bin Laden invest millions into the company... (please see "Bush, Bath, & Bin-Laden")Seems they named themselves after a hotel (like the Bildeburg)...

-here's another Carlyle loop-de-loop, courtesy of Wikipedia:George W. Bush, current U.S. President, was appointed in 1990 to the Board of Directors of one of Carlyle's first acquisitions, an airline food business called Caterair, which Carlyle eventually sold at a loss. Bush left the board in 1992 to later become Governor of Texas, where he was responsible for appointing several members of the board which controlled the investment of Texas teachers' pension funds. A few years later, the board decided to invest $100m of public money in the Carlyle Group...

How about this one:United Defense is a classic military contractor. They make guns and gun systems, large Howitzer-type, mobile Howitzers. They make the Bradley fighting vehicles and the Paladin gun systems that we’ve seen a lot of on TV, especially during the Iraqi war. They are one of the largest defense contractors to the Army in the nation. And the Carlyle Group has owned this company since 1997. After the controversial visit of Bush to the U.S.S. Abraham in the flight suit, he returned to California from 30 miles offshore and gave a speech at, of all places, the United Defense plant. The President of the United States speaking at a plant that is 50% owned by a company that his father is a consultant with...

weeeeeeeeeee!

From an interview with Dan Briody:"There are a number of transactions that the company profited from directly following the Sept. 11 attacks. The most important one was the fact that they were able to take United Defense, their crown jewel of defense holdings public shortly after the attacks. In fact, in the prospectus that they circulated, before that IPO, they cited the Sept. 11 attacks as one of the reasons why they were able to sell public stock in this company at this time. So that was all on the back of the defense build-up following Sept. 11.

"There are also a number of other holdings of theirs -- like at that time, they owned a company called the IT Group, which is a company that cleans up hazardous materials and won a very lucrative contract to clean up the Hart Senate Building in Washington, D.C., which had been tainted by anthrax.

"They also own a company called U.S. Investigative Services, USIS, which is a company that does background checks and provides varying levels of security clearance for different government employees, airline employees – things like that. Obviously their contracts went through the roof after Sept. 11.

"In addition to that, they own companies that do all kinds of security, different aerospace companies. So whenever there’s a big defense buildup, those companies profit.

"...It’s a limited partnership. And as such, it’s under no obligation to release any of its financial data. So it’s very difficult for the average citizen to find out what the holdings of this company are and where the conflicts of interest might be...

read "Sleeping with the Devil : How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude" by Robert Baer to learn a few kernals of truth. i read this in 2002 but i seem to remember it acting as if al qaeda wasn't created by the cia but it definately is a tell all about bin laden and poppy bush's dealings with each other in the carlyle group. it also talks about Dubya's failure of an existence until 9/11 came around. (the author is a former cia agent from the mideast)

Perhaps a minor item, but was Victor Bout the basis for Nicholas Cage's character in Lord of War? The stories about Bout (thanks for the link to Yorkshire Ranter!) sound like scenes from that movie.

Then again, if there was a connection--actual or coincidental--between Bout and that popular/main stream movie, that would give the Bout story some zest-help to push it in the main steam media--and perhaps help to kill the UAE ports deal.

"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

Bush left the board in 1992 to later become Governor of Texas, where he was responsible for appointing several members of the board which controlled the investment of Texas teachers' pension funds. A few years later, the board decided to invest $100m of public money in the Carlyle Group...

It sounds that's a reference to the Texas Growth Fund, which among other things, has investments in voting machine company Hart InterCivic:

The Texas Growth Fund, a venture capital firm run with money from two large public pension funds, is another major investor in Hart Intercivic tied to George W. Bush. The Growth Fund works with UTIMCO, formerly chaired by Tom Hicks. The Fund's major investment in Hart came in the summer of 2000, while George W. Bush was Texas governor. The Growth Fund is the only state-run private equity fund in the United States

Why does the state of Texas run its own venture-capital business, anyway? Who benefits politically from high-risk investments in companies that -- like Veridian -- are in potentially unsavory lines of work? . . .

In Austin, the state's investments include Classic Cable, which shows old movies, and Hart InterCivic, formerly the printer Hart Graphics, which has morphed, with TGF's help, into one of three main national manufacturers of electronic voting equipment. . . .

Profits (or lack thereof) aside, it is TGF's investment in Hart InterCivic which may be the most problematic. A recent New York Times story reported that some observers accuse the three electronic voting vendors -- now doing a brisk business in the wake of the debacle in the Florida recount of the 2000 presidential election -- of being too closely tied to the Republican Party. A Hart InterCivic spokesman describes those charges as "rubbish." Perhaps. But the fact remains that Hart InterCivic is partially owned by the state of Texas -- which itself is currently wholly owned by the Republican Party.

And Tom Hicks, of course, gets you right into the heart of Texas/Bush financial sleaziness. The Bass brothers are part of the picture as well -- and something I saw on tomflocco.com was claiming that one of the Basses was connected with this Dubai deal.

A good rule of thumb in these matters is that wherever there be Saudi oil sheikhs, there be Texas oil men as well.

The ports deal seems to me to be linked to the highly profitable drug trade. I see lots of indirect evidence for this. Specifically, I think this is going to flood the U.S. with heroin if it goes through.

Heroin is a bad drug. Some drugs can, IMHO, have positive effects occasionally. Some are just harmless. But Heroin is a bad deal. It dulls your mind, withdraws you, wrecks your life, and generally leads you to a state of emptiness and despair.

It leads you to... precisely the kind of tipping point of despair that you need to be led to in order to undergo religious conversion... especially to militant/fundamentalist forms of religion. Jesus saves!

Here goes the conspiracy theory...

The neofascists seem to be building up a particular type of evangelical Christianity as the new "imperial religion." However, while evangelical Christianity is growing, they need a new "great awakening" type mass-conversion to create the kind of unquestioning drum-beating political base required to really bring about fascism in America.

So how do you create that? Create a *massive* epidemic of *destructive* drugs. Then, through government funded "faith-based initiatives," ensure that all of the hopeless casualties of the drug epidemic get a strong dose of evangelical Christianity-- perhaps even as a required condition of receiving treatment.

In other words: political chemical warfare.

These guys think long term. I admit that this is a bit of a stretch, but if I can think of it then they can too. This is certainly the kind of game that Karl Rove and his contemporaries like to play. Witness their "demographic gerrymandering" in New Orleans.

In 1996, al-Qaeda assumes control of Ariana Airlines, Afghanistan's national airline, for use in its illegal trade network. Passenger flights become few and erratic, as planes are used to fly drugs, weapons, gold, and personnel, primarily between Afghanistan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Pakistan. The Emirate of Sharjah, in the UAE, becomes a hub for al-Qaeda drug and arms smuggling. Typically, “large quantities of drugs” are flown from Kandahar, Afghanistan, to Sharjah, and large quantities of weapons are flown back to Afghanistan. [Los Angeles Times, 11/18/01] About three to four flights run the route each day. Many weapons come from Victor Bout, a notorious Russian arms dealer based in Sharjah. [Los Angeles Times, 1/20/02] Afghan taxes on opium production are paid in gold, and then the gold bullion is flown to Dubai, UAE, and laundered into cash. [Washington Post, 2/17/02] Taliban officials regularly provide militants with false papers identifying them as Ariana Airlines employees so they can move freely around the world. A former National Security Council official later claims the US is well aware at the time that al-Qaeda agents regularly fly on Ariana Airlines, but the US fails to act for several years. The US does press the UAE for tighter banking controls, but moves “delicately, not wanting to offend an ally in an already complicated relationship,” and little changes by 9/11. [Los Angeles Times, 11/18/01] Much of the money for the 9/11 hijackers flows though these Sharjah, UAE, channels. There also are reports suggesting that Ariana Airlines might have been used to train Islamic militants as pilots. The illegal use of Ariana Airlines helps convince the United Nations to impose sanctions against Afghanistan in 1999, but the sanctions lack teeth and do not stop the airline. A second round of sanctions finally stops foreign Ariana Airlines flights, but its charter flights and other charter services keep the illegal network running. [Los Angeles Times, 11/18/01] People and organizations involved: al-Qaeda, Ariana Airlines, Victor Bout, United Nations, United Arab Emirates, Talibanhttp://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?id=1521846767-530

And This:

Narcotics: Second to Oil and the Arms Trade

The revenues generated from the CIA sponsored Afghan drug trade are sizeable. The Afghan trade in opiates constitutes a large share of the worldwide annual turnover of narcotics, which was estimated by the United Nations to be of the order of $400-500 billion. (Douglas Keh, Drug Money in a Changing World, Technical document No. 4, 1998, Vienna UNDCP, p. 4. See also United Nations Drug Control Program, Report of the International Narcotics Control Board for 1999, E/INCB/1999/1 United Nations, Vienna 1999, p. 49-51, and Richard Lapper, UN Fears Growth of Heroin Trade, Financial Times, 24 February 2000). At the time these UN figures were first brought out (1994), the (estimated) global trade in drugs was of the same order of magnitude as the global trade in oil.

The IMF estimated global money laundering to be between 590 billion and 1.5 trillion dollars a year, representing 2-5 percent of global GDP. (Asian Banker, 15 August 2003). A large share of global money laundering as estimated by the IMF is linked to the trade in narcotics.

Based on recent figures (2003), drug trafficking constitutes "the third biggest global commodity in cash terms after oil and the arms trade." (The Independent, 29 February 2004).

Moreover, the above figures including those on money laundering, confirm that the bulk of the revenues associated with the global trade in narcotics are not appropriated by terrorist groups and warlords, as suggested by the UNODC report.

There are powerful business and financial interests behind narcotics. From this standpoint, geopolitical and military control over the drug routes is as strategic as oil and oil pipelines.

However, what distinguishes narcotics from legal commodity trade is that narcotics constitutes a major source of wealth formation not only for organised crime but also for the US intelligence apparatus, which increasingly constitutes a powerful actor in the spheres of finance and banking.

In turn, the CIA, which protects the drug trade, has developed complex business and undercover links to major criminal syndicates involved in the drug trade.

In other words, intelligence agencies and powerful business syndicates allied with organized crime, are competing for the strategic control over the heroin routes. The multi-billion dollar revenues of narcotics are deposited in the Western banking system. Most of the large international banks together with their affiliates in the offshore banking havens launder large amounts of narco-dollars.

I'm still digesting this one, so I'm not going to try to summarize it. (Scott is always better at throwing facts at you than at surrounging them with a useful context.) But there are some points in it which are extremely relevant to the present concern with Dubai and the UAE -- particularly in the section headed "Far West, Ltd, Halliburton, Diligence LLC, New Bridge, and Neil Bush."

Diligence and New Bridge are connected with Joe Albaugh -- former head of FEMA -- whose connections I started noodling at somewhat after Katrina but didn't push very far because they're extremely deep and extremely complex, and I was starting to feel way over my head.

Viktor Bout comes into the narrative as well, as does the Afghan heroin trade and a whole bunch of Russians.

The real question for me isn't what's going in in that part of the world -- it's clearly drugs, arms, and money-laundering, with a little sex trade on the side. Rather, it's what factions are involved, what their real interests are, and what they're prepared to do to advance them.

"Rejoice, the Beginning is Near" Repentance {change of mind} is a change of outlook, knowing that God is Sovereign {in control} and all this is going to work out for good {even when that is very hard to believe}. So, yes, your sign is a good one, too. It reminds me of the verse "hold up your head for your redemption is drawing nearer"